Does Texting Affect High School Students’ Grammar?

High school students use the least amount of words to send text messages. BTW (by the way,) IDK ( I don’t know,) or TTYL (talk to you later) are just a few abbreviated phrases text speakers use to get their text message across.

Finding out ways to communicate by using as little words as possible is an efficient way to communicate with buds. However, teachers are finding out that this chat-room lingo is making its way into the classroom.

“I think that students don’t even realize that they’re doing it,” said Allie Sakowicz, a senior at Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Ill. “When we’re using all this social media we’re not thinking about spelling words right, so naturally that’s going to translate into the classroom.”

Teachers see these language shortcuts on homework, research papers and tests. Not only are students using less letters, they’re forgoing other grammar rules.

“They do not capitalize words or use punctuation anymore,” said Terry Wood, a ten-year foreign language teacher at St. Mary’s Ryken High School in Leonardtown, Md., “Even in E-mails to teachers or [on] writing assignments, any word longer than one syllable is now abbreviated to one.”

Teachers blame Twitter, Facebook, texting and chatrooms, and they have good reason for doing so. The Pew Internet & American Life Project surveyed 700 students and found that 85 percent of them use some form of electronic communication. Sixty-four percent of students said they use text-speak to communicate.

While older teachers are frustrated by this use of slang in the classroom, younger teachers simply “let it go.”

“Not that they like it, but they kind of expect it,” Sakowicz said. “Teachers that are older and aren’t familiar with all the social media devices are really upset that this is what’s becoming of our language.”

Teenagers have always been the most common demographic to use slang, so Pew’s findings aren’t surprising. What’s scary is that students are blurring the lines between the language they use with their friends and how they speak and write in the classroom.

I think the English language should be preserved, and it is our teachers’ duty to discourage text-speak in the classroom. Young or old, teachers can uphold proper grammar by taking off points on homework and correcting students when they speak slang in the classroom.

I personally don’t think that there’s anything wrong with using text speak when communicating to someone informally. However, students need to see that teachers, professors and future bosses may see slang as disrespectful.